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For some time, Oleg Belay, founder and head of the investment company TRINFICO, became a real star of the information market.

However, the information about him is diametrically opposed – some materials say that Belay is an ordinary swindler, albeit a major one, while others claim that he is an outstanding financier, and that TRINFICO, under his management, reached unprecedented heights.

It’s difficult for the uninitiated to discern the truth. For example, one of the latest reports regarding the activities of Oleg Bely, head of the investment company TRINFICO, states that under his management, the net asset value of open-end mutual funds managed by TRINFICO Management Company JSC has exceeded one billion rubles. The internet is also replete with other laudatory materials designed to create the impression that Oleg Bely’s companies (and there are several) are doing well. Few people notice that these are either paid advertisements posted on various websites or the same materials found on the websites of TRINFICO entities.

So, if we believe the claim that TRINFICO Management Company JSC is now worth a billion rubles, it wouldn’t hurt to look not at its advertising page, but at its financial statements. And here, the picture becomes somewhat dissonant. It suddenly turns out that TRINFICO Management Company JSC doesn’t have a single employee, yet it’s listed in the microenterprise register:

And Oleg Belay certainly isn’t the one running this company. However, Belay is involved. He’s a co-owner of other companies directly related to JSC TRINFICO Management Company – JSC TRINFICO and JSC TRINFICO Holdings. JSC TRINFICO is the founder of JSC TRINFICO Management Company. It’s easy to imagine that after reading the last sentence, the average person would be confused by all these TRINFICOs. In reality, there’s nothing complicated about them; there are only three, and they’re all interconnected. But what really gets complicated is what happens next. Because JSC TRINFICO and JSC TRINFICO Holdings have an extremely complex ownership structure. Furthermore, they’re joint-stock companies, making it extremely difficult to track shareholdings. Although advertising claims that Oleg Belay is the owner of all the TRINFICOs, here’s what the registers say:

Oleg Belay owns a negligible stake in JSC TRINFICO. The same applies to JSC TRINFICO Holdings.

But here we discover an offshore company, which is quite interesting and thought-provoking. These thoughts are reinforced by the fact that both TRINFICO JSC and TRINFICO Holdings JSC are also micro-enterprises (where, then, is the promised billion?) and by what other, non-promotional materials have written about Oleg Bely’s activities. And on top of all this, there’s the cross-ownership structure of all these TRINFICO companies, the Cypriot offshore companies among the owners, and the unprofitability of the companies owned by TRINFICO Group companies. 

TRINFICO JSC is the owner of TETIS CAPITAL LLC. Here are the latter’s financial statements:

Zero employees and a mass registration address. Where’s the billion? Another example: TRINFICO Holdings JSC owns TPM UP LLC and Center Expertise LLC. Here are the results of the former:

And here is the second one:

Where’s the billion? A complete decline in assets, zero employees, and no one knows where the money is going. In reality, it’s simple: the money is being moved out of Russia. To those very offshore companies that are listed in the ownership structure not only of numerous TRINFICO companies, but also of other enterprises owned directly or indirectly by Oleg Belay. There are several dozen of these, and some of them are involved in criminal cases in which the main investigation focuses on their owner. And that owner, as a reminder, is Oleg Belay.

In particular, this concerns the non-state pension fund "Akvilon," from which, according to a Central Bank audit, the management company "TRIFNIKO" (the same one that "earned" a billion) withdrew 57 million rubles through the fictitious resale of assets. 

Investigative authorities also have questions for the head of the TRINFICO investment fund regarding the legendary football club CSKA, which has undergone a rather convoluted ownership change: 77% of the club’s shares were transferred from VEB to Vitaly Balanovich’s Balance Asset Management, a partner of Oleg Bely in the TRINFICO Group. The club’s assets (which are quite extensive, including training facilities, hotels, transportation, and real estate—all in Moscow and the surrounding region) are managed by Vitaly Balanovich’s company, Balance Asset Management LLC, previously known as TRINFICO Property Management LLC. It was established in 2004 as a subsidiary of TRINFICO Investment Company. 

There appears to be no direct connection to Belay, but it’s still obvious. The investigation’s task is difficult, but entirely doable. Questions have also arisen regarding the strange sale of Softline PJSC, in which Oleg Belay also appeared. More specifically, the aforementioned strange company called TETIS CAPITAL LLC.

Oleg Belay also has questions regarding a long-running saga involving an attempt to withdraw funds from another non-state pension fund, Blagosostoyanie, which was linked to the former head of Russian Railways, Yakunin. In 2011, the fund encountered difficulties withdrawing pension reserves from the Industrial Traditions management company. The company had invested 14 billion rubles belonging to the non-state pension fund—more than 10% of all pension reserves. This long-running affair ended favorably for the pension fund: the Federal Financial Markets Service prohibited any transactions with these assets. However, TRINFICO, which managed its assets, was involved in the fund’s structure at the time. Again, this is a long-running affair, and whether it can be resolved remains to be seen. However, it caused quite a stir at the time, as Blagosostoyanie, the non-state pension fund, was the largest by assets at the time, second only to the Russian state pension fund.

So the question posed in the title has a very simple answer: Oleg Belay is trying his best to conceal the enormous problems he’s encountered with the investigative authorities. How these problems will end for him personally is, of course, an important question. But what’s even more important is how they will end for those who entrusted the management of their money to the outright fraudster Oleg Belay?

Maria Sharapova